Tag: microwave

We haven’t had a microwave oven for a while, because shopping for a microwave is hard. The model that Consumer Reports rates highest has a 2-star (out of 5) rating from their readers, because it breaks quickly. And that’s the case pretty much across the board. Consumer-level microwaves all have terrible track records.

Well, I take that back. Consumer-level microwaves made in the last ten years have terrible track records. Plenty of 20-year old microwave ovens are still in use, and the people who replace them with something more recent all have something to say about how quickly the replacement wore out.

But you know what doesn’t have a terrible track record? Commercial microwave ovens. The one that’s heating up hot dogs and heat’n’eat soup in the mini-mart has probably been doing that for the last five years, day in, day out. That’s what I want.

And now, that’s what I have. I ordered a light-duty (by which they mean around 50 uses per day) Panasonic commercial microwave, a model NE-1024, last week, and it showed up today. It is, I’m pretty sure, the same model that the Husky Union Building TV lounge had when I worked at the UW, and while those things got pretty crusty, they never broke, as far as I remember.

With this thing, there’s no futzing with an electronic touchpad, trying to figure out how to set the power level and cook time. No popcorn button, no baked potato button, no “reheat”. It has a dial. It goes from 0 to 6 minutes. You put the food in the box and close the door, then turn the dial. When it’s done, it dings and you open the door. If you open the door before it’s done, it shuts off. Frozen food goes in, dial gets turned, cooked food comes out. The instruction manual is half a page long. (Ok, the manual is about 10 pages, but the other 9 pages are for the next model up, which has a programmable touchpad controller.)

And there’s no damn rotating glass plate to fall off its track and make thumping, squeaking noises. The food doesn’t need to rotate because the antenna rotates under it. Why don’t all microwave ovens work like that?

I’ve used it twice so far. I like it better than any other microwave I have ever used, except for the ones which were the same. Here are some blurry phonecam photos, because my good camera has a dead battery: